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      in US Politics

      ‘Major brand worries’: Just how toxic is Elon Musk for Tesla?

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      Globally renowned brands would not, ordinarily, want to be associated with Germany’s far-right opposition. But Tesla, one of the world’s biggest corporate names, does not have a conventional chief executive.After Elon Musk backed Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) – calling the party Germany’s “only hope” – voters are considering an alternative to Tesla. Data released on Thursday showed that registrations of the company’s electric cars in Germany fell 76% to 1,429 last month. Overall, electric vehicle registrations rose by 31%.Tesla’s biggest shareholder, who has voiced support for rightwing leaders around the world, is now a de facto US cabinet member under Donald Trump’s administration.Tesla’s valuation has become inextricably tied to Musk’s politics. After he spent $288m backing Trump’s 2024 election victory, Tesla’s valuation passed $1tn. Yet Musk’s political involvements – unprecedented for the head of a company that size – could also be having a negative effect.On Friday, a group of Extinction Rebellion activists occupied a Tesla store in central Milan. Activists chained themselves to the cars’ tyres, and others glued themselves to the windows along with the slogans “Make millionaires pay again” and “Ecology for all, no ecofascism”.Analysts are openly wondering if Musk is causing lasting damage to a brand he has made synonymous with electric cars and, by extension, liberal aspirations to tackle climate change.Tesla was approached for comment.Tesla was the world’s biggest producer of battery electric cars in 2024, but sales dropped to 1.79m, the first time the company has endured a sales decline since 2011 after years of rapid growth that made it the world’s most valuable carmaker.The manufacturer said in January that global sales would grow during 2025, and Wall Street analysts expect Tesla to sell more than 2m cars this year. But even those forecasts would hardly represent a blazing return to form. As recently as October, Musk said he expected 20% to 30% annual sales growth, implying as many as 2.3m cars sold.“Customer retention will be key in 2025 as customers may begin to look for an ‘Alternative for Tesla’,” said Matthias Schmidt, a Berlin-based electric car analyst.View image in fullscreenOther analysts are more optimistic. Dan Ives, of Wedbush Securities, a US financial firm, is a longstanding Tesla supporter. Ives believes the company’s share price could rise from its current level of about $280 to hit $550. However, he acknowledged the negative perception created by Musk’s partnership with Trump and his work on the so-called department of government efficiency (Doge) – an issue he described as the “elephant in the room” for the brand.Calling them “major brand worries for Tesla”, he added in a note to investors that the direct impact on sales should be relatively small. “We estimate less than 5% of Tesla sales globally are at risk from these issues despite the global draconian narrative for Musk.”Ives said that Tesla was on the verge of making a new, cheaper vehicle – costing less than $35,000 – and would “own” the autonomous vehicle market, factors that would help push Tesla to a valuation of more than $2tn.Nonetheless there are clear signs in the US, Tesla’s biggest market, that would-be buyers are wavering, according to Strategic Vision, a market research company. Its new vehicle experience study tracks the buying preferences of up to 250,000 car buyers in the US, and it shows a sharp decline in regard for Tesla since Musk bought Twitter (now X) in 2022.Shortly before the multibillionaire bought the social media platform, 22% of new vehicle buyers would have “definitely” considered buying a Tesla. By the end of 2024 it was just under 8%. The proportion who would not consider buying a Tesla has risen from 39% over the same period to 63%.According to Strategic Vision, approximately half of non-Tesla EV buyers identify as Democrat or liberal, compared with about 20% identifying as Republican or conservative. Among Tesla owners, the Democrat owner group has fallen from 40% during the Biden administration to 29% now, with the Republican group averaging about 30% since 2021.“Democrats, the majority party of EV owners, are now actively rejecting Tesla and choosing other options,” said Alexander Edwards, president of Strategic Vision.Meanwhile, global protests against Musk and Tesla are intensifying. In America, there have been demonstrations outside dozens of Tesla showrooms, while in the UK a guerrilla poster campaign – “0 to 1939 in 3 seconds” – has emphasised Musk’s fascist-style salute at an inauguration rally. In Germany, he was recently caricatured on a carnival float as “Napo-Elon”.Ross Gerber, chief executive of the US investment management firm Gerber Kawasaki, which holds shares in Tesla, said Musk had given people an outlet to express their disdain for his politics.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHe said: “He has left himself open to a direct way for people to attack him if they don’t like his politics. It’s ironic because the vehicles were made for liberals who care about the environment and it has become a symbol of the conservative movement.”Tesla is valued at about $847bn – still more than the next 10 carmakers combined. Few investment banks have included any effect from Musk in their work trying to accurately value Tesla. Still, there are further reports of falling sales. In Australia, February sales were down about 72% compared with the same month in 2024, according to data released this week.View image in fullscreenSeveral analysts have raised concerns that the current valuation is much too high. JP Morgan is among the most pessimistic of the investment banks, suggesting that Tesla’s share price could fall as low as $135 – or a valuation closer to $400bn. Musk is the largest shareholder in Tesla, a key contributor to his status as the world’s wealthiest person.“Tesla shares continue to strike us as having become completely divorced from the fundamentals,” wrote JP Morgan in January, pointing out that 2025 profit expectations were down 70% since 2022. The share price has more than doubled since then – something that would not usually happen when investors expect lower profits.Analysts at UBS, a Swiss investment bank, concur, saying that Tesla’s valuation “continues to confound us”, with big risks in its efforts to make money from self-driving cars or humanoid robots.While sales declined steeply in January in several markets, several analysts have warned against relying on numbers for a single month. Schmidt said: “Some consumers are likely holding back purchase decisions and waiting for the updated Model Y which arrives this month. The big question though is, are these just the die-hard Tesla enthusiasts which remain in line while other potential consumers jump ship?”There have also been positive signs elsewhere. UK Tesla sales fell in January, but bounced back by a fifth in February to leave sales up year-on-year for 2025 so far. In the US there were also signs of a recovery after a fall in January, with preliminary data for February indicating rebound sales of about 42,000 cars, up 14% year-on-year, according to Wards Intelligence.But the UK sales figures also highlight another concern for investors: that Tesla’s lead on rivals could be narrowing as a flood of new models arrive. Tesla’s electric market share for the first two months of 2025 was 11%, down from 14% in 2024, according to New Automotive, a research group.Ben Nelmes, New Automotive’s chief executive, said: “The impact of Elon Musk’s political views on Tesla’s sales may have been overstated, but Tesla is gradually losing its position as the dominant EV seller in the UK as other carmakers bring more up-to-date and cheaper models to market.”In China Tesla is under big pressure from a slew of cheaper competitors, most notably BYD. In Tesla’s second-biggest market, sales of its China-made EVs dropped 49% year-on-year in February, to the lowest level since August 2022.Edward Niedermeyer, author of Ludicrous – a 2019 book about Tesla which focuses on Musk’s habit of making bold claims about the business that don’t stack up – argues that the prospect for new business like robotaxis and robots are distant. “The unique moment that we’re in now is the business has peaked,” he said.The worry for Tesla investors is whether Musk has turned that peak into a cliff-edge.Additional reporting Lorenzo Tondo More

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      Will Trump put a Fox News host on the US supreme court? Mark Tushnet can’t rule it out

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      Should Donald Trump get the chance to nominate a new justice to the supreme court, to join the three rightwingers he installed in his first term, he might pick “the equivalent of Pete Hegseth”, Mark Tushnet said, referring to the Fox News host who is now US secretary of defense.“Trump as a person has his idiosyncrasies, I’ll put it that way,” Tushnet said, from Harvard, where he is William Nelson Cromwell professor of law, emeritus. “And … I have thought about potential Trump nominees, and actually, what comes to mind is the equivalent of Pete Hegseth: a Fox News legal commentator.”Justice Jeanine Pirro? It’s a thought. Perhaps future historians will debate “The Box of Wine that Saved Nine”. Perhaps not.“I wouldn’t rule it out,” Tushnet said, of his Fox News theory, if not of Pirro, per se. “I don’t think it’s highly likely, but given the way those things work, and given the idea that you want people who aren’t simply judges, it’s not a lunatic thought, I guess.”The reference to “people who aren’t simply judges” is to arguments laid out in Tushnet’s new book, Who Am I to Judge?, in which he makes his case against the prevalence of judicial theories, particularly originalism, to which conservatives adhere, and calls for a rethink of how justices are selected.Tushnet is a liberal voice. Provocatively, he writes that Amy Coney Barrett, the third Trump justice who in 2022 helped remove the federal right to abortion, at least has a hinterland different from most court picks, as a member of People of Praise, a hardline Catholic sect.“I think her involvement in that group has exposed her to a much wider range of human experience than John Roberts’s background, for example,” Tushnet said, referring to the chief justice who was a Reagan White House aide and a federal judge. “And so if you’re looking for people who have been exposed to human experience across the board, I think she’s a reasonable candidate for that.”View image in fullscreenConey Barrett cemented the 6-3 rightwing majority that has given Trump wins including rejecting attempts to exclude him from the ballot for inciting an insurrection and ruling that presidents have some legal immunity. Now, as Trump appears to imagine himself a king and oversees an authoritarian assault on the federal government, reading Tushnet and talking to him generates a sort of grim humor.Looking ahead, to when Trump’s executive orders might land before the justices, Tushnet suggests “the court will put … speed bumps in the way of the administration. They won’t say: ‘Absolutely you can’t do it,’ except the birthright citizenship order.”That order, signed on Trump’s first day back in power, seeks to end the right to citizenship for all children born on American soil and subject to US jurisdiction, as guaranteed under the 14th amendment since 1868.On 23 January, a federal judge said Trump’s order was so “blatantly unconstitutional” that it “boggled” his mind. Should it reach the supreme court, Tushnet can see the rightwing justices “saying: ‘Look, yeah, if you want to do this, we’re not saying you can, but if you want to do it, you got to get Congress to go along. You can’t just do it on your own.’ So that would be a speed bump.”That said, Tushnet sometimes thinks “about how in the US, there are these traffic-calming measures that are literally speed bumps but sometimes, if you go over too fast, you fly”. Trump, he said, has licensed rightwing justices to take decisions that “may not count as speed bumps if you fly off them”.Tushnet was happy to answer a question he thinks all supreme court nominees should be asked: what’s your favorite book and favorite movie?Tushnet’s favorites are Middlemarch by George Eliot and Heaven, a 2002 film directed by Tom Tykwer from a script co-written by Krzysztof Kieślowski. He wrote his book containing such questions, he said, “because I had this longstanding sense that the [supreme court] nomination process has gotten off the rails, mostly by focusing exclusively on judges as potential nominees, and secondarily by focusing on constitutional theory.“For the past 20 years, the court … has been dominated by people whose background was as judges or appellate advocates, and historically that was quite unusual. There are always some judges but there always had been people with much broader kinds of experience, including a former president, William H Taft [chief justice between 1921 and 1930], and several candidates for the presidency, including Charles Evans Hughes [1916], Earl Warren [a vice-presidential pick in 1948], senators like Hugo Black. And those people had disappeared from consideration for the court, and that seemed to be a bad idea.”Tushnet describes a “political reconstitution of the nomination process provoked in large measure by the Republican reaction to the Warren court”, which sat from 1953 to 1969, the era of great civil rights reforms.“I think their view was the Warren court was not composed of judges, they were politicians, some called them ‘politicians in robes’, and Republicans sort of thought the way to get away from the substantive jurisprudence of the Warren court was to put judges on the court, rather than people with what I call broad experience,” Tushnet said.One justice on the current court was not previously a judge: Elena Kagan, one of the three besieged liberals, was dean of Harvard Law School, then solicitor general under Barack Obama.Tushnet “went into the project thinking that I would find more great justices who had been a politician than I actually did. When I was teaching, I would do this thing about who the justices were who decided Brown v Board of Education”, the 1954 ruling that ended segregation in public schools, “and I think it’s fair to say that not one of them’s primary prior experience was as a judge, and like seven or eight of their prior primary experiences were as a politician. And if Brown v Board is the premier achievement of the supreme court, the fact that it was decided by a court primarily made up of politicians counts in favor of thinking about politicians when appointing to the court.”“Why not do it? For me, the main feature of having been a politician is not that you’ve taken stances aligned with one or another political party at the time, but that you’ve provided reasons in many different ways, you’ve grown up amongst people with a wide range of life experiences that you’ve had to think about, as a politician, in order to get their votes, in order to get your way,” he said.Tushnet’s ideal might be Charles Evans Hughes, an associate justice from 1910 to 1916 and chief justice between 1930 and 1941, but also governor of New York, Republican candidate for president and US secretary of state.On the page, Tushnet imagines asking Hughes a question – “What constitutional theories do you use?” – and getting an appealing answer: “I try to interpret the constitution to make it a suitable instrument for governance in today’s United States.”Tushnet says modern judges and justices should say the same, rather than reach for judicial theories. His new book is in part an answer to a demolition of originalism by Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of UC Berkeley law school: “I distinguish, I think, more clearly than other people have, including Erwin, between what I call academic originalism and judicial originalism.”Either form of originalism concerns working out what the founders meant when they wrote the constitution, then advocating its application to modern-day questions. Tushnet “think[s] a good chunk of academic originalism is not subject to many of the criticisms that Erwin levels. It’s not perfect but it’s an academic enterprise, and people work out difficulties, and there’s controversy within the camp and so on.View image in fullscreen“Judicial originalism is different because it has a couple of components. One is, we now know it’s quite selective. To get originalism into the TikTok decision, for example, you have to do an enormous amount of work. It’s not impossible, but it’s not an originalist opinion, fundamentally. So [justices are] selectively originalist, or, as my phrase is, opportunistically originalist. They use it when the sources that they’re presented with support conclusions they would want to reach anyway, and the adversary process at the supreme court isn’t a very good way of finding out what they say they’re trying to find out. And so as a judicial enterprise, originalism just doesn’t do what it purports to do.”To Tushnet, the late Antonin Scalia, an arch-conservative and originalist, is “the leading candidate to be placed on a list of great justices” of the past 50 years, “because of his influence and his contributions to the court.“But one bad contribution was his widely admired writing style. Now, writing styles change over time. And having read an enormous number of opinions of the 1930s, I know there’s an improvement in readability since the 1930s. But the idea that [opinions] become more readable, accessible and memorable by including Scalia-like zingers, short phrases that are quotable and memorable, seems to be just a mistake. But he’s very influential, and so people try to emulate him … Justice Kagan does it in a gentler way. I guess my inclination would be to say: ‘If you’re going to do it, do it the way Justice Kagan does, rather than the way Justice Scalia did.’”Tushnet agrees that some of Scalia’s pugilistic spirit seems to have passed into Samuel Alito, the arch-conservative author of the Dobbs v Jackson ruling, which removed abortion rights, if while shedding all vestiges of humor.In his book, Tushnet shows how Alito’s Dobbs ruling contained a clear mistake, the sort of thing that is largely down to the role clerks play in drafting opinions, as Tushnet once did for Thurgood Marshall, the first Black American justice.“Times were quite different then,” Tushnet said. “The year I was there, the court decided 150 cases. Now they’re deciding under 50 a year … the year I was there was the year Roe v Wade was decided [1973, establishing the right to abortion, now lost]. It had been resolved fundamentally the year before, so they were just cleaning things up, but we knew these were consequential decisions.”The court will soon have more consequential decisions to make. In the meantime, talk of a constitutional crisis, of a president defying the courts, grows increasingly heated.“My sense is that we’re not at the crisis point yet,” Tushnet said. “Like many administrations before it, the Trump administration is taking aggressive legal positions, which may or may not be vindicated. If they’re not vindicated, they’re muttering about what they’ll do. That’s happened before.“My favorite example is that in the 1930s, Franklin Roosevelt, while a major decision was pending, had his staff prepare two press releases, one saying: ‘Actually the court has upheld our position,’ the other saying: ‘The court mistakenly rejected our position, and we’re going to go ahead with it anyway.’ Now, they didn’t have to issue that press release, because the court went with the administration. But, you know, muttering about resistance is not historically unusual. Resisting would be quite, quite dramatic, but we’re not there yet.”

      Who Am I to Judge? is published by Yale University Press More

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      in US Politics

      Trump to sign order barring student loan forgiveness for public servants engaged in ‘improper activities’ – as it happened

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      Donald Trump plans to today sign an executive order barring government and non-profit employees from a student loan forgiveness program if they engage in “improper activities”.The order affects the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, under which employees of those organizations can have their federal student debt forgiven if they meet certain criteria. White House staff secretary Will Scharf said that the order will target employees of non-governmental organizations “that engage in illegal, or what we would consider to be improper activities, supporting, for example, illegal immigration or foreign terrorist organizations or otherwise law-breaking activities”.The order will direct the treasury and education departments to ensure that people involved in those activities are not eligible for the forgiveness.We will be wrapping the live blog for the 46th day of Trump’s second term.Here is a look at some of the day’s developments:

      The Trump administration announced that it had canceled $400m in federal grants and contracts to Columbia University in New York because of what it alleges is the college’s repeated failure to protect students from antisemitic harassment.

      The Trump administration fired the head of the US justice department office that handles presidential pardon requests, the official said in a social media post. Liz Oyer, who was appointed by Biden in 2022, said: “I’m sad to share that I was fired today from the job I have poured my heart and soul into for the last three years.”

      The Department of Homeland Security is ending the collective bargaining agreement covering tens of thousands of airport transportation security officers. The agency, led by secretary Kristi Noem, also said it will stop deducting union dues from employees’ paychecks, a major setback for the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents TSA screeners and relies on $15m in annual payments.

      The US Department of Agriculture has eliminated two committees that advise it on food safety. The USDA eliminated the national advisory committee on microbiological criteria for foods and the national advisory committee on meat and poultry inspection, a spokesperson told Reuters.

      About 4,000 defense department personnel received termination notices this week from their employers, a US official told ABC News. Last week, the department said that up to 5,400 employees could be affected in an initial round of job cuts.

      After the New York Times reported that Elon Musk and Marco Rubio had argued in front of Trump on Thursday, the president said “no clash” had happened. “No clash, I was there. You’re just a troublemaker and you’re not supposed to be asking that question, because we’re talking about the World Cup,” Trump said to a reporter.

      The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency is removing a previous requirement that banks had to get special approval before engaging in a range of cryptocurrency services. The government agency overseeing banks reaffirmed that US banks can legally offer certain cryptocurrency activities, like crypto-asset custody, certain stablecoin activities, and participation in independent node verification networks.

      Donald Trump held court in the Oval Office, where he again expressed sympathy for Russia, saying he found it “easier” to negotiate with them on achieving a ceasefire in Ukraine. Trump also threatened Russia with sanctions and tariffs if it did not sign on to a ceasefire.

      Trump cheered the latest employment numbers as proving the wisdom of his economic policies, and said he may soon target Canada with more tariffs to settle long-running disputes over their dairy and lumber industries.
      The so-called “department of government efficiency” is reviewing $1.6tn in social security payments, which includes data on individuals’ names, birthdates, and earnings, in an anti-fraud initiative that has raised concerns among advocates, ABC News reports. They fear that the Trump administration may begin denying benefits to vulnerable older Americans.Details of this initiative were confirmed in a recent letter to Congress by the acting social security administrator, Lee Dudek, and others officials.Along with reviewing sensitive data, Doge staff have been looking into the Social Security Administration’s telephone service, which many beneficiaries use to file initial claims.Trump administration to drop case against plant polluting Louisiana’s ‘Cancer Alley’Donald Trump’s administration has formally agreed to drop a landmark environmental justice case in Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley” region, marking a blow to clean-air advocates in the region and a win for the Japanese petrochemical giant at the centre of the litigation.Legal filings made public on Friday morning reveal that Trump’s Department of Justice agreed to dismiss a long-running lawsuit against the operators of a synthetic rubber plant in Reserve, Louisiana, which is allegedly largely responsible for some of the highest cancer risk rates in the US for the surrounding, majority-Black neighborhoods.The litigation was filed under the Biden administration in February 2023 in a bid to substantially curb the plant’s emissions of a pollutant named chloroprene, a likely human carcinogen. It had targeted both the current operator, the Japanese firm Denka, and its previous owner, the American chemical giant DuPont, and formed a central piece of the former administration’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) efforts to address environmental justice issues in disadvantaged communities. A trial had been due to start in April 2025 following lengthy delays.Community leaders in Reserve had expressed grave concerns about the case’s future following Trump’s return to the White House after the president moved to gut offices within the EPA and justice department responsible for civil rights and environmental justice.Read Oliver Laughland’s full report from New Orleans here:The US state department is conducting a review of all visa programs, a department spokesperson told CNN, following reports of a potential new travel ban. A US official told the news outlet that Afghanistan might be among the countries affected.The ban could take effect as early as next week, though the final decisions regarding the included countries and the timing remain uncertain, according to the official.On 20 January, Donald Trump issued an executive order directing cabinet members, including the secretary of state, to identify countries where vetting and screening processes are inadequate enough to justify a partial or full suspension of admissions.A former campaign fundraiser for the ex-US representative George Santos was sentenced Friday to one year and one day in prison for impersonating a high-ranking congressional aide while raising cash for the disgraced New York Republican.Sam Miele, speaking briefly in federal court on Long Island, apologized to everyone he had “let down”, including family and friends, the Associated Press reports.“What I did was wrong. Plain and simple,” Miele said, vowing he would never be involved with the criminal justice system again.Protesters demanding an in-person town hall from their western Michigan GOP representative chanted loudly Friday as honking drivers signaled support, the Associated Press reports.Hours later, the representative Bill Huizenga held a town hall – by phone. The disruption seen outside his Holland office earlier in the day was absent, as the controlled setting allowed for questions from people who wrote and called in.“I know this may not be satisfactory to some who would like to just create a scene and be, you know, be disruptive,” Huizenga said on the call. “But we know that this is extremely effective for reaching people.”Some Republicans have opted to hold telephone town halls after GOP leaders in recent days advised lawmakers to skip town halls, which have been filled with protesters decrying Donald Trump’s administration’s slashing of the federal government.The US Department of Labor has reinstated about 120 employees who had been facing termination as part of the Trump administration’s mass firings of recently hired workers, a union said on Friday.The American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal employee union, told Reuters that the probationary employees had been reinstated immediately and that the department was issuing letters telling them to report back to duty on Monday.The New York representative Elise Stefanik praised Donald Trump’s decision to cancel $400m in federal grants and contracts to Columbia University because of what the administration alleges is the college’s repeated failure to protect students from antisemitic harassment. In a statement, Stefanik said:
      President Trump is delivering on his promise to hold universities like Columbia accountable by defunding them for failing to protect their Jewish communities,” said Stefanik in a statement sent over email. “I’m proud of my efforts on the Education Committee which led to the FORMER Columbia University President’s resignation and I applaud President Trump for ensuring that hardworking taxpayer dollars do not fund these cesspools of antisemitism.
      Here’s more context on the grant cancellations:The Trump administration fired the head of the US Justice Department office that handles presidential pardon requests, the official said in a social media post.Liz Oyer, who was appointed by Biden in 2022, posted on LinkedIn:
      I’m sad to share that I was fired today from the job I have poured my heart and soul into for the last three years. I am so proud of the team we built in the Office of the Pardon Attorney, who will carry on our important work. I’m very grateful for the many extraordinary people I’ve had the opportunity to connect with on this journey. Thank you for your partnership, your support, and your belief in second chances.
      A pardon attorney runs the process by which people apply for and receive clemency.Oyer’s termination comes two weeks after Donald Trump appointed Alice Marie Johnson as “pardon czar”, a role in which she will recommend people for presidential commutations.The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced Friday that it is ending the collective bargaining agreement covering tens of thousands of airport transportation security officers.The agency, led by secretary Kristi Noem, also said it will stop deducting union dues from employees’ paychecks, a major setback for the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents TSA screeners and relies on $15m in annual payments.“Thanks to Secretary Noem’s action, Transportation Security Officers will no longer lose their hard-earned dollars to a union that does not represent them,” reads a statement by a DHS spokesperson. “The Trump Administration is committed [to] returning to merit-based hiring and firing policies.”The US Department of Agriculture has eliminated two committees that advise it on food safety, the agency said on Friday.The USDA eliminated the national advisory committee on microbiological criteria for foods and the national advisory committee on meat and poultry inspection, a spokesperson told Reuters.These cuts raise concerns about government oversight of the food supply as the Trump administration seeks to downsize the federal bureaucracy and slash costs.The committees provided scientific advice to the USDA and other federal agencies on public health issues related to food safety, said the non-profit consumer advocacy group Consumer Reports.The Department of Veterans Affairs will allow crisis hotline responders to work remotely instead of in offices because of the lack of privacy, CNN reports.The VA granted a full exemption for the Veterans Crisis Line from Donald Trump’s executive order requiring federal employees to return to the office.The hotline staff no longer have their own office space because the buildings that housed the call center’s three national hubs – in Georgia, Kansas and New York – were all closed during the Covid pandemic. More

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      in US Politics

      The Guardian view on Trump and media: attention is power. Can Democrats grab it? | Editorial

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      Donald Trump won the White House not with money, though he spent plenty of it, but by dominating the conversation. He hasn’t stopped campaigning. He uses attention to bolster his political power, and uses his office to make sure that everyone keeps watching.He was barred from leading social media platforms after the January 6 attack on the Capitol, but four years later, their owners attended his inauguration. Many of his key hires appear picked for their media presence as well as their ideological bent and sycophancy. Tuesday’s interminable address to Congress was garnished with the kind of wild claims or outright lies that he knows take off on social media. For him, posting online ultimatums to Hamas and a disturbing AI-generated “Trump Gaza” video is all part of foreign policy. One of the most chilling, and telling, moments of last week’s attack on Volodymyr Zelenskyy was Mr Trump’s remark: “This is going to be great television.”Strikingly, key members of the Trump circle have consistently championed the self-styled misogynist Andrew Tate, one of the rightwing influencers who drove young men towards Mr Trump. Romanian authorities allowed Mr Tate and his brother to fly to the US last week, despite outstanding charges including rape, human trafficking and money laundering, all of which they deny. (The brothers are also wanted by UK authorities over allegations of sexual aggression in a case dating back to 2012, and four British women are pursuing a civil case against them.) Though Romania denies any US pressure, and the president claimed to know nothing, the travel ban was lifted days after Mr Trump’s special envoy, Richard Grenell, raised the case with Romania’s foreign minister.The Tate brothers are part of the far-right disinformation networks that not only promote vile and extreme views but also undermine reputable sources of information. Mr Trump embraces this, and far-right media activists are invited to “report” from the Oval Office while the Associated Press is shut out for referring to the Gulf of Mexico. The White House press operation has reinvented itself as a social media machine, spewing out endless memes, attack lines and deliberate provocation to drown out rival voices. “They’re all offence, all the time,” said Steve Bannon approvingly.Like a social media algorithm made flesh, the president himself serves up an endless but unpredictable (and increasingly extreme) stream of material. It keeps admirers coming back for more and overwhelms critics, who don’t know where to focus. This strategy may offer diminishing returns, not least because it requires a constant ratcheting-up of content. Mr Trump can only do so much to bend reality: administration failures, U-turns and the costs of policies such as tariffs will probably temper voters’ enthusiasm.But even without commanding political leadership or control of any branch of government, Democrats can’t just sit back and wait to find out. The political commentator and author Chris Hayes notes that they have been defined by risk aversion, preferring no attention to critical coverage. Finding ways to seize the initiative is essential. Mr Trump’s lies must be challenged. But fact‑checking his provocations, without compellingly promoting political alternatives, will not be enough. Procedural and legal responses are essential, but so is the ability to grab back the megaphone – or find another one.

      Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More

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      US exits fund that compensates poorer countries for global heating

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      The Trump administration has withdrawn the US from a global agreement under which the developed nations most responsible for the climate crisis pledged to partly compensate developing countries for irreversible harms caused by global heating.The loss and damage fund was agreed at the Cop28 UN climate summit in late 2023 – a hard-won victory after years of diplomatic and grassroots advocacy by developing nations that bear the brunt of the climate crisis despite having contributed the least to greenhouse gas emissions. The fund signalled a commitment by developed, polluting countries to provide financial support for some of the irreversible economic and noneconomic losses from sea level rise, desertification, drought and floods already happening.The US has a long record of delay tactics and obstructionism, and had so far pledged only $17.5m (£13.5m) to the loss and damage fund, which became operational on 1 January this year. Now the US, the biggest historical emitter of greenhouse gases, will no longer participate in the initiative.“On behalf of the United States Department of the Treasury, I write to inform you that the United States is withdrawing from the board for the fund for responding to loss and damage, effective immediately,” said Rebecca Lawlor, the deputy director at the US Office of Climate and Environment, in a letter to the fund.The decision to abandon the loss and damage fund was condemned by climate advocates from the global north and south.“The US decision to step away from this commitment at such a crucial moment sends the wrong message to the global community and to those in dire need of assistance,” said Mohamed Adow, a climate policy analyst and director of the thinktank Power Shift Africa. “We urge the United States to reconsider its position in the interest of the planet and future generations … this regrettable decision risks undermining collective progress and erodes the trust necessary for effective international cooperation.”Rachel Rose Jackson, a research director at Corporate Accountability, said: “Let’s be clear – the US has never been a climate champion. Yet the Trump administration’s anti-climate action agenda – including its withdrawal from the loss and damage fund board – is a wrecking ball made of dynamite. It’s dangerous, it’s malicious and it will destroy lives.“We cannot allow the Trump administration, and the greedy corporations pulling the strings, to get away with destroying the planet. It’s time for the United States to pay up its climate debt and do its fair share of climate action.”Ali Mohamed, the chair of the African Group of Negotiators, a coalition of African nations participating in UN climate negotiations, said: “This decision, made by the nation with the largest historical responsibility for climate change, jeopardises vital support for vulnerable countries facing irreversible climate impacts.”Trump has already pulled out of the 2015 Paris climate accords – for the second time after the US was reinstated under Joe Biden – claiming the international agreement on cutting greenhouse gas emissions and preventing climate catastrophe ripped off the US.“I’m immediately withdrawing from the unfair, one-sided Paris climate accord rip-off,” he said, signing the executive order on his first day in office. “The United States will not sabotage our own industries while China pollutes with impunity.”China currently ranks as the top greenhouse gas emitter but is also the global leader in the manufacture and deployment of renewable energy. The US is the largest historical emitter and, while emissions have fallen alongside reductions in coal, it has become the world’s largest oil and gas producer by a huge margin in recent years.Record-breaking ocean and atmospheric temperatures have caused chaos around the world and across the US, including devastating wildfires in Los Angeles and deadly flooding across Florida and southern Appalachia. Meanwhile, several of Trump’s policies, including his pledge to “drill, baby drill”, dismantle federal agencies, and impose tariffs that threaten a trade war, risk derailing the burgeoning US renewables sector.The loss and damage fund is a work in progress. As of late January, 27 countries had pledged a combined total of $741m – the equivalent of about 0.2% of the irreversible losses developing countries are facing from global heating every year.The US withdrawal appears to be another rejection of global diplomacy and the reality of the climate crisis.Harjeet Singh, a climate activist and founding director of the Delhi-based Satat Sampada Climate Foundation, said: “The decision by the Trump administration exemplifies a longstanding pattern of obstruction by the US government in securing necessary finance for addressing climate impacts, [and] undermines global efforts to deliver climate justice.“As the largest historical emitter, the United States bears a significant share of the blame for the climate adversities affecting vulnerable populations worldwide. We must hold them accountable and ensure they contribute their fair share towards global climate reparations.” More

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      Trump’s attacks on South Africa are a punishment for independence | Achille Mbembe and Ruth Wilson Gilmore

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      On 7 February, less than three weeks after taking office, Donald Trump issued an executive order: “Addressing Egregious Actions of the Republic of South Africa.” The order directed US agencies to halt aid to South Africa, condemned South Africa’s case against Israel at the international court of justice (ICJ) as an “aggressive position”, and declared that white Afrikaners be prioritized for resettlement in the US based on the duplicitous claim that they are “victims of unjust racial discrimination”.The humanitarian consequences of this executive order are devastatingly clear. On 26 February, notices were sent out terminating support for HIV organizations funded by the US President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (Pepfar), initiated in 2003 by then president George W Bush. The termination of funding to Pepfar is catastrophic for South Africa. Studies predict this could result in more than half a million unnecessary deaths and up to half a million new infections.But Trump’s order is an escalation of an existing strategy to condemn, isolate and punish South Africa for charting an independent course for its people and their relationship to the international community at large.On 11 January 2024, the South African government presented its case at the ICJ, arguing that Israel’s military actions in Gaza – endorsed, funded and armed by the United States – constituted genocide under the 1948 Genocide Convention. The ICJ case was not the first time that South Africa had broken with Washington on the global stage; in 2003, South Africa strongly opposed the invasion of Iraq, warning that the war amounted to “a blow to multilateralism”, in the words of its then president Thabo Mbeki.South Africa’s renewed appeal to multilateralism did not keep the Biden administration from responding to the ICJ case against Israel with immediate hostility. On 3 January, before arguments were even made, the state department spokesperson Matthew Miller declared: “We find this submission to be meritless, counterproductive, and completely without any basis in fact whatsoever.”While South Africa’s ICJ case was widely welcomed at home, some white actors with significant power in the country’s public sphere were hostile. Strident demands for South Africa to align with the west were issued by organisations such as the Johannesburg-based Brenthurst Foundation, among others. They found easy allies in Washington. In early 2024, several members of Congress argued that South Africa’s stance on Israel should disqualify it from receiving preferential trade benefits, including removal from the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), which aims to improve economic ties between the US and sub-Saharan Africa.Last month’s executive order marks a dangerous new phase in the efforts to strangle South Africa’s international solidarities – but this time with an explicitly white supremacist twist, focused on the country’s efforts to redress the compounded, multi-generational inequalities of apartheid. Trump has long supported the far-right conspiracy theory that falsely claims white farmers in South Africa are subject to a government-backed campaign of violence. In August 2018, he tweeted that he had asked then secretary of state Mike Pompeo “to closely study the South Africa land and farm seizures and expropriations and the large-scale killing of farmers”.These views have been nurtured by organisations such as AfriForum, a rightwing Afrikaner group that has actively cultivated relationships with American conservative institutions since around 2017. In 2018, AfriForum representatives met with then National Security adviser John Bolton and conducted interviews on Fox News, promoting conspiracy theories about a non-existent “white genocide” in South Africa. A network of far-right white South Africans in the US, including Elon Musk, has similarly gained access and influence. Joel Pollak, an editor at Breitbart, is widely tipped to be Trump’s new ambassador to South Africa.These conspiracy theories aim to present white farmers as victims as South Africa moves toward remedy for dispossession. A 2017 government land audit found that white people, 9% of the population, owned approximately 72% of all privately owned farmland – a direct result of colonial dispossession that must be addressed as an urgent moral priority, as indicated in South Africa’s 1996 constitution.But if the target of Trump’s executive order is South African land reform, its principal casualty will be the beneficiaries of Aids treatment. One of the great successes of South Africa’s democracy has been its HIV treatment program. With approximately 5.9 million people receiving antiretroviral therapy through the public healthcare system, it is the largest HIV public health program on the planet. Pepfar has been funding a fifth of these costs, part of a program estimated to have saved 25 million lives worldwide.The Trump administration makes an intentional target of South Africa’s health policy. The deadly cruelty is the point.From Mexico to Greenland, Panama to Ukraine, the Trump administration is bullying allies to align with its vision of national primacy and ethnic supremacy. The rapid implementation of this new Trump doctrine requires Americans to join together with people across the world not only to oppose reactionary measures – but also to remain steadfast in their joint commitment to internationalism that enhances wellbeing. That commitment will require richer countries to spend in solidarity, not charity.The immediate task is of course the most urgent: rapid multilateral action is needed to secure the safety of the huge numbers of HIV patients whose lives are now in danger. The many pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities dotted through the global south should be turned to producing what people need, even as land and housing reform also necessarily shape regional agendas.But the risks posed by this executive order transcend its particular measures. There is enough; the problem is allocation, and the symbolic and conceptual as well as material means to realize human well-being.

      Achille Mbembe is a research professor in history and politics at the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research in Johannesburg, South Africa.

      Ruth Wilson Gilmore is a professor of earth and environmental Sciences, and American studies, at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. More

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      Radical DeSantis plan for Doge-style cuts in Florida opposed by own party

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      Radical plans by Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, to overhaul the state’s financial machinery have hit turbulent waters, with party leaders pushing back on his Doge-style efficiency taskforce, and economists dismissing a proposal to abolish property taxes as essentially unworkable.DeSantis touted his handling of the economy in his “state of the state” speech at the opening of Florida’s spring legislative session on Tuesday, during which he insisted: “We must continue to be a friend to the taxpayer.”It came a week after he formally announced the creation of a state department of government efficiency (Doge) to replicate the controversial federal operation helmed by Elon Musk.Reporting to the governor, its purported mission is to eliminate wasteful spending by rooting through various state boards and commissions, and auditing local government and university budgets.Despite Florida having cash reserves of $14.6bn, and the lowest number of government employees per capita of any state, by DeSantis’s own concession, he said he still wanted to cut 740 full-time jobs. DeSantis also said he wanted to, potentially, get up to 900 more associated positions “off the books” by scrapping 70 “redundant” entities such as advisory bodies.Democrats were quick to point out that Florida already has a voter-approved government efficiency taskforce, which was set up in 2006 with an almost identical mandate. DeSantis’s new efficiency team, they asserted, was itself an example of unnecessary spending, and a performative exercise of jumping on the Doge bandwagon to align himself with Donald Trump’s slash-and-burn approach to various taxpayer-funded federal agencies.“Republicans have been in total control of Florida’s government for nearly 30 years, and he wants to talk about government waste?” Nikki Fried, chair of the Florida Democratic party, said in a statement.“Ron has consistently passed the largest state budgets in Florida’s history, illegally spent millions of taxpayer dollars to run political campaigns, and just allocated $250m to fund his political stunt on immigration. Don’t lecture us on wasting taxpayer dollars.”Another level of perceived resistance came on Tuesday from an unexpected source: the leaders of both of Florida’s Republican-dominated legislative chambers.“Let’s focus on what matters. Let’s pass actual reforms rather than symbolic gestures,” Daniel Perez, the Florida house speaker, told members following DeSantis’s address.“Let’s repeal government programs instead of reshuffling them. Let’s swing for the fences and not just try to get on base.”Perez has previously noted that DeSantis, a self-styled fiscal conservative, benefited from a 70% budget increase for the executive office of the governor over his six years in office.He and the senate president, Ben Albritton, clashed with DeSantis in January over the governor’s demand for a special legislative session to advance his immigration agenda. The parties came together to eventually pass a mutually acceptable hardline bill, but observers say tensions remain.In remarks to the senate, Albritton, a member of the existing efficiency taskforce, said he was proud that Florida already “has a great framework for accountability”, and that he and other lawmakers had made a substantive number of recommendations “to improve flexibility [and] simplify processes”.“The fact is we are a state and nation of laws that should be created by elected officials accountable to the people who elected them, not appointed professional staff,” he said.Some observers noted that, after forcefully pushing both his Doge measure, and the related but unprecedented pitch to replace Florida’s $40bn-a-year property tax structure with an as yet unspecified alternative, DeSantis was relatively quiet about them during his Tallahassee address on Tuesday.He said “taxpayers need relief” from high property taxes, which he said made owners in effect tenants of the government, and that lawmakers were working on a proposal for “constitutional protections for Florida property owners” to place before voters in the 2026 election.“DeSantis’s latest scheme to eliminate property taxes threatens the very services that keep our communities safe and functioning. These taxes fund schools, fire departments, police, trash pickup, and safety on our roads and in our water, among other essential services,” said Jared Nordlund, Florida director of the civil rights and advocacy group UnidosUS.“Eliminating them will drive local governments into financial ruin, allowing the state to seize more control, a blatant attack on home rule and local democracy.“By the way, where was the update on his much-hyped Doge initiative? Just weeks ago, DeSantis promised a major push on this program, yet there was not a single mention. Was it just another empty headline grab? Floridians deserve answers, not political theater.”DeSantis’s office did not respond to a request for comment.On Thursday, the Floridian reported that Republican state representative Ryan Chamberlin was working on legislation to eliminate property taxes.The non-partisan Tax Foundation, meanwhile, questioned the advantage to Florida, which has no state income tax, of abolishing the traditional system by which state and local governments raise money.“The property tax is a relatively economically efficient tax. It corresponds better than most taxes to the benefits that people receive by paying it,” said Jared Walczak, the group’s vice-president of state projects.“The value of your home is not a perfect proxy for the value of local services you receive, but it is a far better approximation than you would get with, say, an income tax where sometimes you’re getting an inverse relationship between payment and benefits.“Most economists say property tax is a fairly good tax and therefore efforts to eliminate it are misguided. If Florida really had the revenue to eliminate the property tax, there are so many better things the state could do. If they don’t have that capacity, they would have to raise another tax or potentially dramatically reduce spending, and that could just be a very bad trade off.” More

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      There are 1,000 grotesque memes of JD Vance – and they’re all more likable than the real thing | Marina Hyde

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      You may well be aware that Backpfeifengesicht is the German word for a face that is worthy of being slapped. Even so, how has this not been internationalised? Or at the very least Americanised, where its dictionary definition would presumably be adorned by a picture of the face of US vice-president JD Vance – already faultlessly playing the role of worst American at your hotel. You can immediately picture him at breakfast, can’t you? Every single other guest on the terrace with their shoulders up round their ears, just thinking: “Where is he now? How unbearable is he being NOW?” Next, imagine breakfast lasting four years.I say the Backpfeifengesicht definition would be accompanied by JD Vance’s face … but then again, what is the face of JD Vance? The internet is awash with people suffering an acute case of not being able to remember it any more, having seen so many hideous comic distortions of Vance that those meme versions are not simply the only results on the first page of your own mental Google search, but stretch deep beyond the second and into the third. Somewhere on page four, where you might as well publish the nuclear codes or pictures of Taylor Swift giving cocaine to babies, is an unmodified snap of what JD Vance actually looks like. Or at least what he looks like with eyeliner.Before you get there – and you don’t, really – your synaptic filing systems throw up every variety of Photoshopped Vancefake: swollen manboy, face wearing a Minion suit, a bearded egg … I’m hoping that sooner or later, an American news outlet will accidentally use a modified photo, because even the picture editor has forgotten what the vice-president looks like, and then we can have one of those massively self-regarding legacy media-blow-ups, where the entire staff has to resign after a remorseless investigation by the executive editor reveals Vance isn’t actually a big purple grape. “This is a stain on our newspaper’s history. A big purple stain.”Vance is more meme than man, now, and it is, of course, something of a consolation that he is so extremely online that he can’t help but have noticed this. The VP is like a one-man government troll-feeding programme – please don’t cut him, Elon! – which is probably why people have become so heroically committed to taking the piss. The probability of the vice-president seeing you insulting him is basically one.Just as previous holders of his office like Teddy Roosevelt and Richard Nixon once did, Vance spent a notable amount of this week both denying he suggested Britain and France were random countries that hadn’t fought a war in 40 years, and replying to random X posters called things like “Jeff Computers” to counter the suggestion that he wasn’t loved and feted on his recent skiing holiday.View image in fullscreenOver on this side of the Atlantic, it must be said that the latter vignette in particular serves as a helpful reminder of the cultural differences between our great nations – and indeed between our great anti-elitists. British politicians would rather admit they’d sexually harassed an intern than gone skiing. (You can, of course, do both – and many do.) If a British cabinet minister were to sally forth on to social media like Vance did, and honk that actually, he had a great time on the ski slopes, it would probably be the end of him. Let’s face it, our rightwing politicians still make time twice a week to do a drive-by on “latte drinkers”, seemingly unaware that the only thing left in most high streets, and quite a lot of people’s lives, is a hot milky drink at a Costa. Yet in our country, would-be populists treat having the temerity to order a coffee like it’s Marie Antoinette skiing past a workhouse – which is a useful illustration of why we don’t have growth, and why our many political failures speak to near-empty rooms at conservative conferences in the US.Anyway: Vance. On or off skis – and I would prefer him to sod offski – the vice-president can be judged successful in his deliberately adopted mission to become mesmerisingly awful. On British army talkboards this week, I spent some very enjoyable time watching veterans of the US’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan offer their thoughts on JD, who I believe was some kind of military journalist for about 15 minutes. Though that wasn’t quite how they put it, naturally. Real soldiers can be hilariously creative with their insults, while Vance is drawn towards the artless, perhaps most neatly embodied in his decision to whine at Volodymyr Zelenskyy: “Did you even say thank you?”Then again, while I’m sure that the memes will keep us warm in the event of an unscheduled nuclear winter, it must be said that other forms of digital manipulation are passing notably without the comment they used to, even until very recently. So perhaps the moral slippage has not been entirely one-sided.I noticed this week that people who only a couple of years ago were hand-wringing about the horror AI deepfakes could wreak upon democracy were now cheerfully sharing synthetic scenes of Zelenskyy slapping Donald Trump in the Oval Office, or Trump crying like a baby, or some other eerie piece of fakery that felt qualitatively different from a still of a lollipop-wielding kiddie Vance. I think people used to think this stuff was bad and corrosive and potentially politically dangerous? Maybe they still do – or maybe only when the other side do it.

      Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

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